This dish. Oh, this amazing dish. I’ve mentioned it before, briefly, when I first had it at the Blue Spoon for my birthday last year. I had every intention of re-creating it at home and sharing the recipe with you but then…well…things kinda fell apart.

Shortly after I first made the dish at home, H came down with a nasty stomach virus. M had a gig out of town that weekend and I thought I’d managed to avoid coming down with the bug, but mere hours after he left…I got sick too. All night, all by myself. No sleep. The morning brought me two bright eyed children who had slept soundly all night, one of whom had to be at her very first dance class mid-morning. I’m sure all the fellow dance parents in the waiting room thought I looked horribly hungover.

All this to say – you know how when you get a stomach bug and you can’t manage to eat whatever it was that you ate right before said stomach bug, regardless of whether that food had anything to do with it?

That.

I couldn’t stomach the idea of Brussels sprouts for ages afterward, or rosemary in any form. Bacon I came back around to pretty quickly but it’s been almost a solid year before I could even entertain thoughts of making this delicious dish again. Heartbreaking!

Heartbreaking because it’s so good. It would be like having your favorite birthday cake (well…*) right before coming down with something. A tragedy.

Brussels sprouts with bacon and mustard cream sauce

1 lb Brussels sprouts

4 oz bacon, chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 1/2 – 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1/2 teaspoon crushed rosemary

salt & pepper, to taste

Put chopped bacon into a large skillet and fry over medium heat til crisp. Set bacon aside when finished but do not drain bacon grease.

Meanwhile, wash Brussels sprouts and cut ends off. Remove any undesirable leaves and cut into quarters. (If they’re small, halves will do.) Add to pan with bacon grease and cook until tender, adding the garlic near the end.

When the Brussels sprouts are tender, add the cream, mustard, rosemary, salt and pepper. Stir well to combine and let cook for a few minutes until sauce thickens slightly. Finally, stir in bacon. Serve and enjoy!

*I mean, they are Brussels sprouts. Nothing like cake. But you get the picture.

Time for the 2014 canning roundup! It felt like I canned a ton of stuff this year, but putting it all out on the table…it doesn’t look like as much as I was expecting. Granted, this is just one specimen from each type of thing I canned and for some things there were many, many jars. (Like 19 jars of strawberry jam. *ahem*)

But first, the garden. I grew a lot of produce last year. I think perhaps it was my best year ever, or at least close to it. I didn’t keep track of everything, but I did weigh the larger harvests, with a few exceptions – I ate a lot of tomatoes straight from my garden at work and I didn’t keep track of any of the carrots or cucumbers or anything leafy. (And I had a lot of carrots – yay!) But, of the things I did keep track of – dum da da dum! – the grand total came to 73 lbs 4 oz of produce.

I grew 49 lbs 15 oz of tomatoes in three different types – 17 lbs 10 oz of slicers, 12 lbs 12 oz of cherry tomatoes and 19 lbs 9 oz of paste tomatoes. (Though I must admit it seemed like more…)

I also had a bumper crop of tomatillos this year – 15 lbs 4 oz and then at least that again, which I ended up giving away because I just didn’t need them. We also had 6 lbs 1 oz of green beans and would have probably had much more had there not been a snake living in my green bean vines, somewhat scaring me away from digging out all the hidden beans. And, lastly, 2 lbs of jalapenos, which, for Maine, doesn’t seem too bad.

But now! On to the canning!

Much of what I canned I grew. Lots of tomatoes, salsa, salsa verde, pickled jalapenos, dilly beans. Another large portion was local – we picked our own strawberries, blueberries and apples, for example. Some stuff (remember those cherries?) was not remotely local, but was delicious, nonetheless!

blueberry pie filling – 4 quarts (only one sealed, the rest I had to freeze…boo!)

applesauce, some spiced – 7 quarts

apple butter – 2 pints, 2 12oz jars

Aren’t they pretty?

I primarily use three books for my canning recipes – Food in Jars, Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, and Canning for a New Generation. I also refer to the National Center for Home Food Preservation website for basic recipes like pie filling, crushed tomatoes and applesauce, mainly to refresh my memory regarding proper headspace and processing times. But I’ve been at this long enough that I feel comfortable winging it, to a certain degree. By now, I’ve got a pretty good grasp on what’s safe and what isn’t and where I can improvise and where I shouldn’t. You’ll also see that I do most of my jams as low sugar jams – they taste so much fresher and more delicious to me that way, without being burdened by massive amounts of sugar. For those, I use Pomona’s Pectin and the basic recipes that come with it.

Looking forward to seeing what I’ll have the opportunity to preserve in 2015!

Today was full. I started off the day with a photo shoot for a lovely friend and her family, followed by some toddler-not-napping and salted caramel corn making. I used this recipe and wow was it tasty! H could barely not keep his hands off it. As evidenced by the photo above…

We went to my dad & step-mom’s in the evening for some great food, fun and a pass-the-phone-around type of chat with my sister in Connecticut. The kids were up way too late and ate way too much sugar (they aren’t the only ones!) but all is quiet now and Santa has made his (or her, as the case may be) appearance. My favorite night of the year!